Advanced Base

[ravells]

Microwaves man!!!! LOL! If you like the hobs then they're there to stay!

I really like the new scheme. What are the blue things behind the couch?

[icosahedron]

A microwave is on my to do list, but it's not real cooking.

The new scheme is largely down to having more elements available - due to making them myself. That 'kitchen vinyl' flooring appeared from nowhere when I applied 'cubism' to a plain yellow tile in Gimp. I thought 'I gotta have some of that!'

Unfortunately I'm hitting the Art Gene Limit now: Inkscape draws round, square and smooth shapes for me (tables, pods, fridges, thrones, etc) so I can create those without any talent, but I just tried drawing a bathtub with limited success (flat rim and flat base are fine, but I can't blend the curved bits to look anything like realistic) and I tried a settee with no success at all (floppy, fabric, complex irregular shadows that have to be added by hand).

The blue things behind the couch are the Power and Life Support units. I'll try to make that a bit more obvious in the next version.

I'm getting an artifact where I join several floor tiles together, the jpegging has actually covered most of it, but part of it can be seen as a dark line extending to the right of the table. Not sure if I can fix that. It wasn't noticeable on the dark floor, but it plagues light ones.

[Redrobes]

I'm getting an artifact where I join several floor tiles together, the jpegging has actually covered most of it, but part of it can be seen as a dark line extending to the right of the table. Not sure if I can fix that. It wasn't noticeable on the dark floor, but it plagues light ones.

Is this what you were describing in the mail about it. I think this is a fixable. I am guessing that the size of the tiles is not exactly the size required to tile them. If the tiles are sized in meters then it should be easy to just open up the floor tile icon in notepad and look at the value of the size - or use the graphical sizing tool in the app. You can zoom in to the crack and see how big it is. If its really not there then ill have to have a look for you. I suspect that its a sliver of an amount less than required tho. If you have set the anchor point at the corner then you can set the grid to the tile amount and use snap to grid to make sure that they are all aligned and locked together. Short of that I don't know.

[icosahedron]

Yes, Redrobes, this is what I mentioned to you. I haven't exhausted the suggestions you gave before, yet, I've sorta got distracted with Inkscape and Gimp for a while.

This time, instead of putting the tiles on a clear background, I used the first tile as the parent icon and placed children alongside it, using no background at all, but there is still a gap around the periphery, though none between the tiles within the 'megatile'.

I didn't think of looking at the values in notepad - in fact I haven't looked at any icon in notepad yet, I'll have to see what they look like.

[ravells]

I'm not familiar with inskcape so I don't know how the transparency and gradients work on it, but if I want to get shading in Drawplus I just create a black copy of the object and then apply a gradient transparency to it.

[Redrobes]

I didn't think of looking at the values in notepad - in fact I haven't looked at any icon in notepad yet, I'll have to see what they look like.

They are little text files which state the image used, the size, the rotate point and a few other little bits then a list of child icons.

You would need to look at the icon for the small bit of floor before you amalgamated many of them into the whole floor. The size is in meters so its dead convenient if your map is too but you can convert with the ole 0.3048 for meters to feet. Anyway, if the tile was supposed to be 1m then set the value to 1.0 for X and Y (the second and third lines) and then set the grid to 1m and put snap to grid on. Reload the tiled floor icon or refresh it and all the tiles should become tightly aligned - assuming that the image for the tile has opaque edges.

If you need help with this then ill write it up more verbose.

[Redrobes]

This time, instead of putting the tiles on a clear background, I used the first tile as the parent icon and placed children alongside it, using no background at all

Ahh this would be a problem. All the child icons should be within the extents of the main icon. I think I know what is going on now. When the extents of the main icon go out of bounds then it assumes that all child icons must also be off screen and it does not draw them. This is also true when you print it and (crucially) when you make a screen captured icon where it does the same process.

Basically - you need a clear base to put them on or maybe a copied (icon from existing one) enlarged floor tile as a base for them. Size up the base to be as big as required for the small tiles to fit on. Since a clear icon is never rendered then this is the preferred base but if your going to screen capture it anyway then it makes no difference what you use.

[icosahedron]

Cheers Redrobes,

Putting child icons alongside the parent was an experiment I tried after putting them on a transprent background had previously given me the artifact.

I'll try putting exact numbers into the icon text next, though I can't see this being the problem since the 0.5m tiles join together into 2m tiles perfectly - its just the 2m tiles don't join with each other.

I think the most likely of your suggestions was the anti-aliasing, and I haven't had the time to investigate that yet.

I could always do a whole-floor icon, it would solve the problem for individual maps, but it wouldn't be transferable.

Thanks for the transparency tip, Ravells, I'll give that a try. Inkscape has something similar.

[icosahedron]

Here's the new version. Just a few minor adjustments. It's probably nearing completion now.

I finally made a half decent couch following Ravells' tip, so I put it in this pic just as a demo. I'm not convinced that it's the right style for the room though. I'll change it back for the final, I think.

I made sure the small tiles are exact in the text file (they were) and I made the large tiles slightly oversize to make sure there was no gap. The lines have dimmed, but they're still there. I'll try something else later.

Not sure what else to do now, any more suggestions?

[ravells]

Some sort of computer terminal?